Emergency Powers of the President

Report Outline
President's Retention of Emergency Powers
Ascendency of Executive Under Roosevelt
Powers Delegated to the President Since 1933
President's Broad Power in War Situations
Special Focus

President's Retention of Emergency Powers

When President Roosevelt took office March 4, 1933, the nation was confronted by an unparalleled economic and fiscal crisis. To enable the federal government to meet that crisis expeditiously and effectively, the Chief Executive was armed with sweeping emergency powers. Today, five years later, the President retains most of the powers then granted, while others have been extended to him in the intervening period. The authority of the presidential office will be further enhanced, moreover, if Congress enacts this year certain legislation now pending.

Many of the emergency powers, granted originally for a limited time and subsequently extended, will expire in 1939. At its session a year hence, therefore, Congress will have to decide whether to allow these powers to lapse or to extend them for an additional period. Failure to make a start toward curtailing the President's emergency powers before the political campaign of 1940 would make it more difficult for the Democratic party to defend itself against the charges of presidential dictatorship which are likely to be levelled against it during that contest. It is already indicated that the Republican party intends to make the most of opportunities for attack along that line.

Republican Attack on Growth of Executive Power

Glenn Frank, chairman of the National Republican Program Committee, which is to meet at Chicago February 28, declared in a radio address at Topeka, Kansas, January 29, that the Republican party “must be more faithfully expressive of the American spirit than the Fascist program of the New Deal with which a deluded liberalism threatens to Hitlerize what was once democratic self-government.”